We are currently looking for 2 or 3 complete chapters on British, Scandinavian, Portuguese, Czech, Romanian or Italian cinematographies in a post-2008 Europe (see CFP below) for our collection, which is already under contract by Routledge.

Topics should include but not limited to:

- “National” cinematographies in crisis

- The role of European film festivals during the crisis

- Case studies that underline the crisis thematically

- Speficic industry examinations in a post-2008 climate

Call For Papers

In the introduction to his European Cinema collection of essays, Thomas Elsaesser (2005) firmly admits that “Any book about European cinema should start with the statement that there is no such thing as European cinema, and that yes, European cinema exists, and has existed since the beginning of cinema a little more than a hundred years ago.” Adopting Elsaesser’s thesis, we also argue that the question of what constitutes “European Cinema” is impossible to answer but at the same time a question with a variety of correct answers.

This edited collection invites scholars from primarily film, television and media studies to provide their own specific “answer” in a specific sociopolitical era, that of the global economic crisis that began in 2008. Since its onset, there has been considerable market instability and growing mistrust in neoliberal political systems. The recession became a popular theme of economic, demographic and sociological research in recent years; however, the audiovisual representations of the crisis remain relatively unstudied. It is through the filmic and televisual responses to these events that history is mediated, reimagined and reformulated to depict personal, cultural and political memories. We believe that many unanswered questions about these narratives in crisis or crisis narratives in European cinema and television merit an academic examination.

What is the position European cinema and television, in a post-2008 era of financial chaos, changing views, humanitarian and cultural crises? Is the theoretical problematic notion of “national” cinema less or more powerful during moments of sociopolitical turbulence? What kind of cultural representations are the preferred mode of European audiovisual narratives during 2008-2016? What are the dominant narrative themes?

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

Theoretical approaches

The notion of “national” cinema

The concept of Millennial European Cinema

The European “auteur”

Articulation of structural analysis with Social Context of Production: Methods and Possible Models of Interpretation/Analysis